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Now, what were you fundamentalists saying about the inerrant word of god?

Thank gawd for the fine folk over at The Reason Project, and the ever brilliant, devilishly witty Arbourist at Dead Wild Roses for this gem. Behold, the complete list of bible contradictions. Click on it for the full picture.

The bars that run along the bottom represent the 1189 chapters of the bible with the length of each bar corresponding to the number of verses in each chapter. White bars represent the Old Testament and grey bars represent the New Testament. Each arc indicates a contradiction.

Well, since you brought that up, I am glad you’ve stopped posting those photos of you water skiing behind your yacht, brunching in Milan, and shopping in Savile Row. Having fun is fine, but rubbing it in like that…

As any sort of rigorous criticism of Christianity simpliciter, this of course falls flat. These hundreds of “contradictions” have been examined and found wanting time and time again on numerous occasions. You can find gems like:

“Is anyone justified? Matthew 12 says that your own words will either justify or condemn you, but Psalm 143 says no one’s life is fully righteous. NO POSSIBLE CONGRUENCE!”

“Did Jesus do miracles? John 2 says Jesus did a lot of miracles, but Matthew 12 has him telling the Pharisees he won’t perform on command. CONTRADICTION!”

“What was Hezekiah’s sundial miracle a sign of? 2 Kings 20 says it was a promise God would heal Hezekiah, but Isaiah 38 says it was a promise God would heal Hezekiah AND save the city from Assyria. AHAH!”

“Was Jonah swallowed by a fish or a whale? Jonah 1 uses the common Hebrew word ‘dag’, meaning ‘sea creature’, and Matthew 12 uses the obscure Greek word ‘kētos’, meaning ‘sea monster’. NO WAY THESE CAN MEAN THE SAME THING.”

But this is still absolutely a helpful graphic. Why? It’s a clear reminder that the fundamentalist, literal-interpretation prooftexting so typical of hyperconservative churches is just plain wrong. Very wrong.

And this is proof. By applying the same literal-prooftext process used to argue for KJV-onlyism and a thousand other extrabiblical doctrines, The Reason Project came up with no less than 439 silly contradictions.

So this is what you can think of every time someone uses hyper-literalism to argue that the KJV translators were inspired, or that spanking is guaranteed to “save your child’s soul from hell”, or that we should actually “pluck out our eyes” due to lust, or that homosexuality is an abomination, or that women need to wear head coverings in church, or any other inanity.

alas, all the contradictions stand, PAW. It is only by apologetics that Christians think that they have been solved. It requires ignoring the bible, claiming that personal interpretatiosn are true with no evidence, etc. For a book that is supposed written/inspired by a perfect being, it certainly fails miserably. If the claims about this god were true, there should be no contradictions at all and it should be crystal clear, not a book that has many many sects declaring that their version is the only right one, all with no more evidence than the next. What one Christian says is “hyperliteralism” the other says is absolute truth. Ooh, those “other Christians” aren’t TrueChristian like I am. My magic decoder ring tells me exactly what God really honestly truthfully meant.

I do love to see Christians declare that each other are “just plain wrong. Very wrong.” Do show me that your version is the only right one. You can even come over to my blog and do so.

Hmm, you’ve prompted me to coin a new phrase: “Magic Decoder Ring Christianity”. I like it. With your permission, I’ll use it generously.

There are a lot of claims being made here, and it would be dizzyingly difficult to painstakingly evaluate each one. So I’ll restrict myself to just a couple.

A careful reading will reveal that I didn’t actually declare that A) I’m a Christian or that B) Other Christian sects are “just plain wrong.” No, what’s “just plain wrong” is the practice of fundamentalist literal-inerrant prooftexting. That’s a philosophical/rhetorical claim, not a religious one.

I notice that you assert “All the contradictions stand”, which means you completely missed the point of my statements (which were combined into a full-on reblog visible on the trackback link at the bottom of the common section). These prooftext contradictions provide a convenient foil to prooftext literalism….but if you want to try to use them as a counter to Christianity simpliciter, you’ll need to do the legwork on your own.

Finally, you seem to be asserting that a multitude of Christian sects declare their sect to be the only true sect, and that this summarily disproves Christianity. Without regard to the logical validity of this claim, I think there’s a big problem with your premise. Only a small minority (by membership) of Christian sects assert that their sect is the only true church, and they are regarded as fringe cults by the vast majority of Christendom.

Please do use it. I would enjoy that one can see the hypocrisy of one Christian the phrase on others just like him, all using magic decoder rings furiously.

PAW, I find it always great when a Christian insists that he didn’t directly say he was a Christian. Not that hard to figure out that you are. But if you want to keep denying it, by all means go ahead, it’s a great season for it. Let me put a fine point on it: Do you consider yourself a Christian?

Ah, that good ol’ “careful reading” claim. Sorry, I have read the bible carefully and thoroughly and have come up with a completely different set of facts than you do. Other Christians claim the same thing, that if I read “carefully”, I simply must agree with them. Sorry, doesn’t work that way. You have no more evidence than they do, and you use the same vague claim “careful reading” which means nothing.

It’s also amusing when you want to say “but but those Christians are literalists and they are wrong!”. Well, PAW, you are a literalist too, you just pick and choose what you want to pretend is literal. As a Christian, I’ll ask you, is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ literally true? Why or why not? What do you use to determine the literalness or metaphoricalness of each bible verse? How does it differ from any other Christian, or theist, for that matter?

Hmmm, Christianity Simpliciter, aka one more version of Christianity whose adherents think their version is the only right one. Yep, just like the Presbyterians (I was one of those), Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. AGain, evidence please that your version is any more valid than the next? I think perhaps displaying some of those powers that JC said that his true followers would have could be a good start.

And I know that a multitude of Christian sects declare their sect to be the only true sect. Let’s see, the Roman Catholics church does, claiming that anyone who doesn’t agree with them has only part of the “truth”. I know that Christians who believe that grace is the only way to be saved disagree with those who say that actions and conscious belief are. I know that Christians who believe in predestination disagree with those who think free will is in play. So, covering all of how the major sects say that the other are wrong, I have shown your claim that “only a small minority (by membership)” is completely false. You are lying or are willfully ignorant when you claim that those who say that their way is the only right way are “regarded as fringe cults”.

Silly, I know that this does not “summarily disproves Christianity”. Nope, it doesn’t (it being a a tu quoque fallacy) , but until one of you can demonstrate you are the True Christians, and the bible does have ways to do that, show that your claims are true, there is no reason to think that any of you are telling the truth.

My favorite argument to literalists. Just read 2 chapters into the Bible, and you get two different, contradictory creation stories. That’s a big red flag to me that this is NOT supposed to be taken literally.

John the bible is inerrant and you are wrong to say it contradicts itself. They are stories of different gods at different places talking to different people collected together in one book by some clever elites with ends which I will have to investigate.

It won’t make a blind bit of difference and we know it, right?
Maybe if The christian god hisself turned up during Sunday’s Vatican Mass and gave the same speech Brian Cohen gave from the window of his mum’s house they might all believe.
Well all except for William Lane Craig, and Unklee, obviously.

Look for the real answer before believing the blind eye. Step mom always says there are two sides to every coin.

“Bible contradictions must be analyzed under traditional rules of logic and reason. At first glance, certain scripture can appear contradictory with other scripture, but further investigation reveals something different. First, reasonable skeptics should agree on the definition of a contradiction. “The Law of Non-contradiction,” which is the basis of all logical reasoning, maintains that something cannot be “a” and “non-a” at the same time. For instance, it can’t be day and night at the same time and at the same place. Therefore, if a biblical scripture violates this Law, it has been established as a contradiction. However, based on the same Law, two statements can differ without being in contradiction.

For example, one witness in a court case might testify that he saw two people at a crime scene, Jake and Sam, while another witness may only testify to seeing Sam. These statements are not contradictory. In fact, in a court of law, these statements could be considered complementary. This is the nature of many of the alleged contradictions in the Bible. For instance, in Matthew, we read that Jesus met two blind men. In Mark and Luke, we only read about one blind man meeting Jesus. In Matthew and Mark, we read that Jesus went to pray alone three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, whereas, in Luke, we read that Jesus went alone to pray on one occasion. Under legal rules of evidence and the Law of Non-contraction, these aren’t contradictory scriptures, and yet they make all of the infamous lists.

Bible Contradictions – A Matter of Translation and Context

Some Bible contradictions appear contradictory solely because of the intricacies of Bible translation. Analysis of the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament) can solve many apparent issues. It’s no different than any other textual review of translated material. All languages (including especially Hebrew and Greek) have special limitations and nuances that cause difficulty in translation. The historical context of the translation can also cause some misunderstanding.

For instance, the Book of Acts has two accounts of Paul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus. In Acts 9:7: “…the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.” In Acts 22:9: “…they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me” (King James Version). At first glance, these accounts seem contradictory — one says that Paul’s companions heard a voice, while the other says that no voice was heard. However, the Greek text solves the matter. “The construction of the verb ‘to hear’ (akouo) is not the same in both accounts. In Acts 9:7 it is used with the genitive, in Acts 22:9 with the accusative. The construction with the genitive simply expresses that something is being heard or that certain sounds reach the ear; nothing is indicated as to whether a person understands what he hears or not. The construction with the accusative, however, describes a hearing, which includes mental apprehension of the message spoken. From this it becomes evident that the two passages are not contradictory.” (W.F. Arndt, Does the Bible Contradict Itself? , pp. 13,14.) Therefore, Acts 22:9 doesn’t deny that Paul’s companions heard certain sounds; it simply says that they didn’t understand the sounds that they heard.”

Look Nate, if the Bible has to be explained through the original languages and cultural context, it is strong evidence, that it is just a nother mythical book from a certain cultural backround and not the attempt to contact humanity on part of the creator of the universe and all the galaxies in it. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume, that if the original writers were divinely inspired, then the translators should have also been under divine inspiration. At least, if this message in this one particular book was important to a god to be transmitted to humanity, regardless if they lived in that time and culture where it was originally written. It would seem odd, that this god did not bother to make it comprahensive to the rest of us. Has this god been on a holiday since the book was written?

If my Finnish translation of the Bible has a contradiction, it does me little good to think it propably made sense in the original Greek, or Hebrew version of it. And because there are so many contradictions in it, does that mean a god expects me to learn ancient Hebrews and old Greek to make sense of the book and find faith in it? The exercise seems futile, because the gods of the Veda could expect me to understand ancient Sanscrit to understand any possible contradictions of the later versions of the Mahabharata before I find faith in that old book.

Further more, even if we exclude all the contradictions by translations, the book still has contradictions in it. How many angels were there at the holy sepulchre? Now, even if it was just a matter of eyewittness accounts adding information to each other, the story does not add up. If this case of Jesus resurrecting actually was taken to an impartial court there is no chance, that the ruling would be that one guy rose from the dead. The eyewittnesses can not even agree wether or not the Roman officials had decided to guard the tomb, or not. Or would you really suggest, that the three writers and their witnesses just simply forgot to mention there were stunned Roman soldiers at the tomb? That is not about adding information to a previous statement, it is a contradictionary statement to obscure claims, that there was just this one young man there, or two young men, or a couple of angels.

Why would the other Gospel writers not find it worth mentioning, that the dead were raising from their graves during the crucifixion of Jesus? That is not just adding information to a claim, it is a contradictiory claim to the other descriptions to the events, because it is of such a magnitude, that there is no other reason than lying, why the other “wittnesses” would have excluded it from the story, or that they had not have heard of it, if it actually happened. This applies to other historians as well, as zombies, or ghosts roaming Jerusalem city streets would have been such an extraordinary event even the historians of antiquity, like Josephus, would surely have reported it, if it had happened. But if one of the Gospel writers lied, how can we tell, that the others were not just making stuff up?

The wittnesses given include stuff, that the persons telling what happened could not possibly have known, or witnessed, like private conversations between the Jewish clergy and the Roman officials. Those are obvious contradictions as well.

It is a contradiction to even claim, that a dude whose execution was aborted and was wittnessed to be taken to a grave cave was actually dead and rose from the dead on the third day just because he was not found from the grave on that day, but later appeared to his buddies. We know that the people of that cultural context and era did not think it was a direct contradiction, because they believed in all sorts of magical stuff, since they did not know any better, but it is a clear and obvious violation of nature, according to what we know about cell decomposition today. A contradiction with the laws of nature.

Claiming it was a miracle, is actually contradicting our present information about reality, since no miracles are known to happen, that we could examine by the scientific method, wich after all, is the best way to determine what is true, that we know of. If we are simply to take it as magic, then we could just as well believe any old magical stories that people tell, like the ones about Buddha for example. Do you believe Buddha performed miracles?

I agree Ratatuky, “It would seem odd, that this god did not bother to make it comprehensive to the rest of us. Has this god been on a holiday since the book was written?”

There can be no agreement between two ‘truths’ with their core essence being in disagreement with each other. If one is true, the other must be false.

The heads –

Gods are based on ancient myths and superstition and many people believe they don’t actually exist. Gods certainly don’t manifest in reality because science observes the universe to be a completely naturally occurring phenomenon. Attributing our existence to unsubstantiated entities is a totally unwarranted and subjective exercise based entirely upon ethereal beliefs and dogma.

The tails –

The Bible’s authority is not derived from reason. The Bible does not appeal to reason and demand obedience because our reason sanctions its teachings. Its authority is not rational in that sense, although we believe the Bible to be reasonable ultimately, because it is the Word of Him Who is the source of all reason. Our reason needs to be approved by the Bible and not the Bible by our reason.

The Bible’s authority is not derived from the emotions. The Bible does not appeal to our feelings and demand obedience because our feelings acquiesce in its teachings. Its authority is not emotional, and our feelings need to be approved by the Bible, and not the Bible by our feelings.

The Bible’s authority is not derived from the Church. The Bible does not appeal to the Church and demand obedience because the Church decrees its teachings. Its authority is not ecclesiastical and the Church needs to be approved by the Bible, and not the Bible by the Church.

The Bible claims that its authority is derived from the God Who breathed it. Its authority is divine.

Nathanology – The art of communicating ideas and arguments with a friendly simple persona who comes with an uncertain perspective.

I take the middle, I do not blindly believe your hate, nor the Christian preachers.
I’m looking at the value of the two. What do you produce and what do they produce.
Where can I find peace and purpose.

Be careful John. To approach life with a no-it-all attitude about everything is an invitation for disappointment.

The reason (notice the use of the word REASON) that I subscribe to the option “heads”, as you would put it, and not option tails, is that the tails option is a logical fallacy called special pleading. If we agree that no logic is needed for you, or I to believe something as true, then any claim may be equally true. If the special pleading that we should believe in a book, that contradicts with any testable reality in dramatical way, because as it appears to be the fabrication of ancient and ignorant people, then how do we choose wich such book should we believe?

Kalevala – the ancient epic of my nation, is much more coherent within, than the Bible. It contradicts not with itself even though it is a compilation of stories from different eras just like the Bible, but it is in contradiction with the reality as we know it. It claims the universe was created by the goddes Ilmatar, as she was being a bit bored with the existance of nothing. We could claim, that the contradiction with reality and miracles and magic performed by the characters of the book should be believed because goddes Ilmatar is the ultimate source of truth, reality and everything. However, no one believes that. Does that make the claim less valid than, that the universe was created by Vishnu as millions of Hindus believe?

How did you come to believe in your particular deity? Did you choose it from among all such stories about gods, or were you born into the culture that indoctrinated you to believe your god is special in comparrison to all the others? Either way, most people find their own cultural gods to be true only because of their cultural heritage. There are literally thousands of gods, thousands of sects of hundreds of different religions and allmost all claim they have the sole truth. And when challenged by logic, they are eager to claim rules of logic do not apply to their gods. Even if one of these religions are true chances of getting it right are random and poor.

If logic does not apply to a god, then it does not apply to any of them and it becomes impossible to make any estimations of their comparative truth value, other than a shouting contest. But hey, perhaps you got lucky and your god is the real one. Only please, do not call such a god “benevolent”. Because, if a god tells us humans to choose between gods, or else – eternal suffering, when that very same god should be aware, that most of the people in the world are totally unable to make such choises and that most people who happen to choose right only do so as a result of their cultural heritage. That is an unethical, evil and rotten to the core god. However, such a god is exactly what you could expect from primitive tribal people explaining random natural phenomenons around them.

It’s interesting you bring up the logical fallacy called special pleading RAUTAKYY.

I agree the Christians god, and their logic arguments tend to rely on this fallacy but please consider my following thoughts. You have made up your mind and come across as very intelligent so I’d be interested in what you think.

Why does ‘Christian god evidence’ get to ignore scientific testing and still be valid? Science is not some narrow way of looking at things that can only examine parts of the universe. Every single phenomena in the universe falls under the purview of science, in principal. Even if we’re talking about a supposed supernatural phenomena, like prayer or the Bible being inspired by the one true god, science can still test and falsify the claim. We can test whether or not praying for sick people helps them or praying over plots of land makes plants grow better. As it turns out, praying doesn’t do anything to make things happen in a reliable, testable, and reproducible way.

Special Pleadings come up a lot in religious debates. Whenever anyone says, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” they are employing a Special Pleading. This is because the “mysterious” thing they’re talking about (usually used to try and rebut the problem of evil, or contradictions in the Bible) can’t be explained in a way that makes any sense or is convincing. Therefore, they say that their claim is immune from the normal standards of reason and evidence that we use for everything else.

It is highly possible that there are phenomena that are real and not yet understood by science. The dawn of radio technology is a historical example. However, the only rational thing to say if someone shows you a radio transmission for the first time is, “I wonder how that works.” It is not rational to leap to an explanation right away, or endorse a ludicrous one if there are better ones. One way that radio signals might work is invisible fairies carrying little bits of information and flying from one radio to another. If someone told you that, and you didn’t know how radios really worked, would it be irrational to not accept this explanation? No. Not if the existence of fairies wasn’t already established. If fairies were a known species (phenomenon?) then the idea that they might be also responsible for radio signals would be plausible. However, you can’t invoke a new, outlandish claim to explain an unknown phenomena. If someone said Leprechauns or gods were responsible for the faster-than-light neutrinos, we aren’t required to take them seriously. Bottom line, you can’t bring in a new idea to explain an unusual phenomena unless there is already independent evidence for that explanation or there are some really compelling reasons.

Sorry for the long intro, but to get to the point, the Christians believe their prayers are answered and this phenomenon is a result of their god. It’s not a new idea and there is no independent evidence to explain answered prayer. I’ve read many testimonies and heard people testifying in person about answered prayers. If answered prayer is true their god does work in their life then what weight should we give this evidence?

My second question stems from an argument I read where the writer says god is not given in sense data, in other words, he exists in a place where we can not perceive him using our five senses, and thus the demand for sense data proving God is silly and useless.

We know form science that there are many things in science, whole knowledge levels above scientific fact, that are not given and backed by any direct evidence and yet scientists assume they are real or that they could be real.

*big bang
*singularity
*string membranes
*dark matter (getting close)
*direct observation of *neutrinos (were historically *accepted as real long before any direct evidence, still don’t have direct observation of them).
*Hawking’s no singularity thing, (although that’s pretty much set aside but it was accepted up front on the premise that we can’t have direct proof).
Multivese (no direct proof, mathematical doesn’t count).

That means not having direct evidence is not any kind of proof that they are not real.

So, his argument was, just as the above non-direct evidence beliefs are, that we have to use other means of understanding God. that’s all there is to it and theology has met that challenge by developing with scientific thinking, as with process theology.

Several reasons why it’s not fair to expect direct evidence:

(1) God is not a thing in creation.

He’s not on a par with objects in the world. he’s the basis of all reality. that would be like expecting to find a piece of the laws of physics or the door to the unified field.

(2) God is not a big man in the sky but is being itself.

God is in everything. He’s too big and too basic to be seen.

(3) God is the mind that thinks reality

We are figments of God’s imagination. That means we can’t get outside the thought and see what’s thinking it. How could we possibility do that?

(4) God’s wants the search.

God doesn’t’ want to make it obvious. He makes it possible for us to find him but we have to seek.

I’d be interested to know what you think about the seemingly unfair standards we hold for things that have no concrete proof, like the Christian Bible god and scientific poor-evidence theories.
—
In closing, I would say I flipped the coin, it’s spinning in the air and my heart is fixing to burst wondering what side it will land on. I have a type of anxiety of being unsure and I feel invisible strings tugging at me, some this way and some the other.

@ Nate. In general I agree with your intro. The pixies explanation would be acceptable to radio waves only, if it would correlate with what we actually know about the world. But you see, allready when radiowaves were first discovered no-one claimed they were caused by pixies, or angels. None who was taken seriously anyway. Because the supernatural was allready then a rather flimsy and unlikely explanation to anything real. No doubt, that if the radio vawes had been discovered 600 years ago, they would have been atributed to the supernatural, but as science marches forward, it leaves less and less space for the supernatural explanation model.

The answer to your first question would be simply that anecdotal evidence is poor way to determine the truth. If I told you, that I died yeasterday and resurrected this morning, would you believe me? No matter how much I believe I did makes it any more likelier. Does it? Not even, if I was a part of a religion that took such things for granted.

The difference between those scientific theories and hypothesis you present and theology is, that theology does not yield to scientific integrity. Theology starts from an assumption, that supposedly can not be wrong. And that is where it all goes wrong in the first place. That is a very poor model of finding out anything objective about stuff we do not know.

Sociology, psychology and cultural studies explain god(s) much more scientifically, than any theology anywhere. They give much more plausible reasons to why people believe in gods, pixies and whatnot. Their explanations are rather simple in comparrison to these elaborate guessing games theologies of different religions build on. Gods are myths by people who did not know how to explain the unexplainable. Andopomophications of the random forces of nature, so that people might appease their fear of the unknown by bargaining with such powers they could not deal with otherwise. What we call wishfull thinking. If this is not so, why did the Moloch Bal expect sacrificial animals and even humans and why did the Abrahamic god want sacrificial animals and booty from military loot during Old Testament times?

If there exist a god outside our experience, that incorporates everything that exists, how do we know it exists? If we could determine it exists, how do we know wich god is it? How do we know it is Jesus and not Allah, or Vishnu? Perhaps it is Ilmatar. I allready pointed out to you why the search you mention does not make any sense, but you did not reply to my point about the vast majority of people being born into their respective religions.

Why would we think, that an old book full of contradictions and obvious fables, is the actual attempt to communicate with us humans, by this alledgedly non-verifiable all incorporating god? If the intent of this god was for us to search it, but not find it too easily, why has it rigged the game so, that it is being found mostly by those who have the cultural indoctrination, to begin with and even they do not seem to be able to agree how this supposedly works. That is people who have faith in prayer even if it really does not work, or in a book full of contradictions, wich is an obvious product of a rather primitive culture? Sorry, but this does not seem very appealing to me.

What for, does the creator of billions of galaxies, want us to worship and search for a particular religion, when this god must be aware how most people end up choosing wich god(s) they worship?

Is it not quite a petty description of the creator of the universe, that it expects us to worship it? But again something one could expect how a primitive culture or cult would explain their vision of a god. Correct?

Sort of, except Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t threaten to smite you and your descendants for doing something he arbitrarily deems wrong, like eating pork or working on a Saturday. That’s more Darth Vader territory.

In serious, anything can be understood on a deep, emotional level if given enough focus and time allowed for “experiences” aka, natural fluctuations in dopamine and cortisol.

I could write 100,000 words of stream of consciousness, and if you devoted your life to understanding it – no other group of words could possibly have more meaning to you – provided you had the social approval and encouragement for this insane use of your time.

” … the universe was created by the goddes Ilmatar, as she was being a bit bored with the existance of nothing … ”

It makes me wonder, how did she know she was bored with nothing, if nothing was all she’d ever had to play with or experience of?

I think all them thousands of gods and goddesses have brilliant imaginations. I know that I couldn’t have conceived of (say) Apple iPods or monkey puzzle trees or sea squirts if I’d never known nothing else but nowt. They’ve clever, them gods …

I think I’m getting old, as I remember liking and commenting on this post but now that I revisited it, I found that I didn’t even like it even though I did read it! What is going on here? Maybe that was God trying to tell me something… I better believe then…

I kid you not, two days ago i was pulling out of my street and started just driving on the left hand side. My wife asked calmly , “You got a reason for killing us?” I had no idea what she was talking about until i saw another car coming toward us. I completely forgot what country i was in, and what side of the road to drive on. That’s scary.

You didn’t get your morning coffee then!
It happened to me twice while I was in the UK… it takes some time to get used to, but when you are not thinking about it, you might just end up doing the wrong thing!